Durban Continues Our Species' Suicidal Trajectory

Climate change is the biggest challenge we face today, just as it was three decades ago. Tragically we have done nothing to mitigate the problem even as human numbers exceed 7 billion. We have watched mean global temperatures rise 1 degree C in the last century and the planet is locked into another 1 degree C increase even if ALL greenhouse emissions were stopped today. With agressive action, earth may still be recognizeable in 2100, but given our failure to act meaningfuly, it is nearly a certainty that our children and grandchildren will be living on a planet nobody alive today would recognize. Even then, the profiteers will be trying to make a buck from humanity's last gasp. Earth will be a planet with far less biodiversity, resilience and capacity to be the life support system for all that some revere as life. I include humans in that group. Atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 ppm in 1850. They are currently at 391 ppm. The paleoclimate record documented from ice core data preserved in Greenland and Antarctica shows that the CO2 levels for at least 650,000 years remained between 180 -290 ppm. The Republican presidential candidates tell us that climate change is a leftist, Marxist, Socialist, Whacko, etc. conspiracy. Obama says nothing and does less. The word coming out of Durbin is suicide.